DOMINO'S DESIGN SPRINT
Vision Statement:
For this project we would like to achieve helping families and friends pick what to have for dinner before everyone gets “hangry” in a fun and understandable way. To do this we must also include a way for this group to in the end order a pizza from dominos on their website or app. Due to us changing our project in the middle of the design process, this will state the goals of our final project. To cater to our audience of groups, this will be an app that you can invite people to join the group to play the game with everyone else. Everyone will be able to pick toppings for the pizza and if the outcome is undesirable, the host of the party can make changes to make sure everyone is happy. To prevent the group from becoming “hangry” this game will include 3 quick simple rounds if selecting toppings. The overall interface of the app with be simple and relaxing to make sure the user is not stressed while trying to use the app and it is easy to understand also making the game quicker. To make this fun it will be a game where you pick toppings and flip a domino which will be generated by the app. This will not only make it to where the users barley have to think about deciding toppings but will also make it fair since it is the computer picking who gets to remove a topping and will create less fighting within the group.
The Challenge:
For this design sprint, our group is to develop an app that helps families and friends choose what to eat before getting “hangry”. We were given 5 in class days to understand, sketch, decide, prototype, and validate our idea to solve the given problem. Within these five days we had different exercises to help us develop our end goal. During day one we picked a team leader and brainstormed ideas using “how might we…” phrases. Day two we completed an activity called “crazy 8s” where we drew 8 frames of what we would like to do for our app and then the entire group voted on certain elements. On day three we decided exactly what elements and we were going to use and made a few drawings of what each one of our app pages are going to look like and planned how they would interact with each page. For day four we turned our drawings into illustrator documents for the app which we then transferred into Marvel to create a prototype with our chosen elements. On the last day we did user testing to find out what did and didn’t work for the user and asked for advice on how things look and if the app could be understandable to other audiences. From this we then made any changes we needed to make the app final app making the appearance better and having the transitions a bit smoother. This overall challenge started with ideas and then was finished with an app that solved the problem of “What’s for dinner?”
Meet The Team
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Hannah Lee
Joah Cambell
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Evie Weeden
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Day One: Understand
For the first day of our design sprint we started with the first step “Understand. For this we first studied our overall topic of creating an app for dominos. We talked about what we needed to have at the end, which would be a digital app or website where in the end the hungry set of people would be able to order pizza. After understanding what the end product was, we then appointed a group leader off depending on the following qualifications that were given to us shown on the left.
1. I have worked at Domino’s Pizza
2. I have worked at a pizzeria
4. I have worked in the food service industry
5. I have worked in retail
6. I have spent the most amount of money on pizza in the last month
Kate was the most qualified, so she became the group leader for the sprint. After well all agreed on this we then moved on to brainstorming ideas on how we could solve the problem of people choosing what to have for dinner in the form of “How might we” questions. By formatting it this way it assures that we will be doing this together, there can be changes made, and that there is a possibility of competing that particular idea. Overall, our group came up with 14 different “How might we…” ideas.
HMW… Make fresh pizza from a truck at your house?
HMW… Create a challenging game with dominos where customers get rewards?
HMW… Create a dominos credit card?
HMW… bring other recipes from other countries for a limited time?
HMW… add an edible art layer to pizzas?
HMW… VR of pizza being made?
HMW… be more relatable to the people?
HMW… do a golden ticket for free pizza?
HMW… connect dominos with a supermarket?
HMW… create a dominos edition easy bake oven?
HMW… Dominos escape room?
HMW… make it so you can schedule a pizza to deliver in advanced?
HMW… make a pizza flavor contest?
HMW… Make a spin a wheel for pizza choices?
From these 14 ideas we talked and broke it down to four ideas of bringing foreign recipes, making a pizza topping contest, doing a golden ticket for free pizza, and creating a dominos credit card. Finally, we decided the create your own flavor contest would be the concept that we would follow to complete this sprint. This idea would include having a pop up on the website or app which would take the user to a different part of the website to create their custom pizza. With this the user would be able to write in or choose from topping we have listed to make their one of a kind pizza. After a certain time period it would close to new entries and open voting which would end in the winner getting a year supply of free pizza. At the end of the submissions and voting we would have a button of “while you wait order a pizza now” since while designing something food related would make the user hungry and want what they are creating.
Day Two: Sketch
With day two we started the “Sketch” aspect of our design sprint. To begin this day we first looked at how we could compare our companies problem to that of other companies and what they did as a solution. As a comparison we compared the Lays “Do us a flavor” contest to our idea of doing a pizza flavor contest. In the lays contest people give ideas of what flavor of chips they would like and the winner’s flavor gets picked to be created as well as a large cash reward. Our contest would be very similar where the person would pick what toppings and a name for the flavor and then the winner would get their flavor made and free pizza for a year. This process would also be decided by customers who have voted on their favorite flavor. After this exercise, we moved on to an exercise to help us better understand the current Domino's ordering process. The leader of our group and one other member, which ended up being Kate and Hannah, moved to a different group to give the new group a workflow to move through to better understand how people navigated the already existing apps and websites. Our group misunderstood so we do not have a recording from another group, but both sets of our group followed someone else’s workflow. The group that me and Joah worked with had us navigate as if we were going to order a pizza, one from the actual dominos website and the other from the mobile browser. The mobile website was pretty quick and easy to navigate where all steps made sense and it was easy to find different options. The mobile browsers website was terrible to navigate. It was super confusing and all over the place with outdated looking graphics. It took much longer for the pizza to be ordered this way and confused the user. Looking back on it we were supposed to do an exercise called crazy 8s where we would draw 8 completely different ideas and vote on different ideas and elements, but this didn’t end up happening for some reasons. To get an idea of why we were supposed to do I ended up doing this exercise now with a mixture of ideas from our first app idea and then our final. Overall, this seemed a lot like what we did on day three but with more drawings. I think this would have actually been a good thing to do when we were originally supposed to because we would have a wider variety of ideas to start with. Some of the things that we ended up using that I put in my 8 drawings were the sign in page, page to select toppings and login page. I think we could have benefitted from using something like the full effect of the dominos flipping to show the user as well as a “how to” right after the sign in page to make sure they fully understand the use of the app.
Day Three:Decide
On day 3 we decided which elements we wanted in our final app and made a plan to incorporate them into the prototype. Each of us drew three slides of what the app would look like and different elements that we would like to have added into our final. After we each finished our sketches we hung them up out in the hallway and each of us were given stickers to make marks on the elements we liked the most. All of us agreed on pretty much the same elements we wanted in the end. All of us thought it would be a good idea to start with a sign in age so that past users can view their past creations and it would be easier to vote and contact the winners at the end. Another element we all agreed on was where we would have a pop up add on the app and website to get people attention while they are thinking about or already ordering a pizza. We all thought it would be a good idea to have large eye catching illustrations and buttons to make it easy for the user to navigate to what they need to and be convinced to click onto the ad. Finally We thought it would be good to show the items users add to their pizza show up on the screen as they add them to make it more interactive and fun. After completing this exercise our team leader drew six app faces including the element we chose as a group. This included the ad that we would use to attract users, the sign in page, information page, pizza creation, and the thank you display. While presenting to the class our ideas we decided that our idea didn’t quite fit the criteria of what we needed to do due to it didn’t lead directly to the user purchasing a pizza right away. Because of this we ended up reformatting our project into a game that would be more likely to help a group of people decide on what kind of pizza to order and in the end to buy this pizza. Before coming to this conclusion we brainstormed other ideas including a spin the wheel with pizza options, A game that is similar to “smash bros” where you would pick a pizza topping and fight and the winner would be the winning topping, and a few other game ideas. Our chosen idea would be a game where Each player would download the app and join the group via invite. Each player would pick 6 toppings and then would “flip a domino” on the screen. The player that got the snake eyes domino would remove a set amount of of toppings. This would repeat until the group is down to the amount of toppings available for the pizza and then it would lead the players to a screen to pay for the order by splitting it or a single bill. We started to use this idea during the fourth day, which was prototyping.
Day Four: Prototype
On the fourth day we finally started to prototype our new idea. We went off of the sketches we made during the last class to start. Kate did a lot of the designing while the rest of us made sketches and I organized our first prototype into marvel. Our prototype consisted of our login and group sign in page, topping choices, the domino spin page, and the final winning pizza page. Originally, we started putting the app together in Adobe Xd but ended up switching to marvel which was a struggle. Marvel was a bit hard to work with because of what we wanted and to get a fully working app we probably would have need a coding option. We made the apps interface very simple so that it was not distracting, and it was easy to read. Originally, we had a more cluttered layout but ended up changing it, so it was easier to navigate. When opening the app through the marvel website it opens to the login page which is filled in when the user clicks on the boxes. This then leads to the group options page which interacts the same way. After the login pages the user is then told to pick 6 toppings, which we have set up thought the work flow for them to choose mozzarella, cheddar, pepperoni, sausage, onion, and mushroom which guarantees that the toppings show up on the pizza since we could not code it this way. After the topping are selected it is then pushed to a screen to flip a domino and then gives you the choice to pick a smaller amount of toppings until you hit your goal of reduced toppings. This then takes you to the winning pizza page which would then take you to either edit the pizza or payment options. Me and Kate ended up creating two different prototypes to show how we made the app run a lot smoother with pages that have the blank pizza without skipping straight to the topping being on the pizza. To do this it is on two different accounts due to you only being able to have one app at a time on the free plan. We also added a “pick (number) of toppings” before each round of what is picked. I think if we had the chance to pick from more than just the app creating programs, we were chosen our app would have been a lot more successful. This would be because we could find a way to set up codding to and if then statements to the toppings so that they could freely pick the toppings and have them still show up on the pizza as they are selected. We could also show a countdown in the corner that changes the number as the toppings are picked to keep track. Being able to code the prototype would also make the domino flipping more what we wanted so that every time the domino is chosen there is a random algorithm to make the domino show a different side at a complexly random chance each time to make it more fair. ​
Day Five: Validate​
On day five we started our usability testing and tested 4 different people. We split this up among our group to make this easier. We also wanted to test people outside of our class and that were not designers so that we could get the view of an actual person using the app. Kate tested one person, I tested two, and Hannah tested one person. The questions we all asked the people during user testing included:
Before seeing the prototype:
What are your expectations for this application?
What do you expect it to look like?
After seeing the prototype
Did your expectations from before looking at the prototype match or was it better or worse?
Would you say the prototype does what it is supposed to do?
Would you say the application design matches the purpose?
What would you like to see come first when you open the application?
Was anything distracting?
Did something not fit or seem odd?
Did the navigation make sense?
What features are missing?
What would you change about this application if you could?
How likely or unlikely would you want to use this product once finished?
To view their user testing results visit their websites which are given in the team section. Both of the people I asked were not familiar with the project whatsoever other than what I told them which was “This is an app to help groups of people quickly decide what pizza toppings to put on their pizza in the form of a group game.” Both the people I tested thought the app was a bit confusing and needed some instructions in the beginning to tell them what exactly to expect. They also both wanted to freely choose their own toppings which was hard for us to do using the program we were using. Both of my users also thought the hints that marvel gave were confusing and distracting which I thought was interesting. Some of the good feedback that I got from the testers was that it did feel like a pizza ordering app as well as for the most part things were pretty understandable once they figured out what was going on. Next time when doing user testing I think it would be a good idea to give the person testing a full script of what to do in what order when it is a workflow that needs to be set up a certain way due to the conditions of the how it was created. Both of my testers also thought it was going to be more fun when they heard that it was a game. I also think it would have been better to completely record the user to see their reactions while interacting with the app as well as answering the questions because you don’t get the complete feedback when just using screen recording. I wish I could have done this but due to some unforeseen problems I ended up having to ask my testers to do it when they were able to.
Overall, I learned that design sprints are pretty cool but can also be super stressful. We were given a lot more time than normal sprints so I can only imagine how stressful it is to do a real one all at once. I learned that your overall first idea may not work so you may have to change it completely in the blink of an eye. I feel like the first 4 days should have been done quicker than in just for days because I feel like once you get to user testing you need the most time. User testing is the most important because this is when you get to finally see how people interact with your design and if people other than the designers who worked on it can understand it. I think we should have had more than one round of user testing so that we could change it depending on each of the thing’s user think is wrong. This would most likely start out with bigger things like understandability and function to smaller things like the cosmetics of the app. If we were to make a final of this app I would definitely like to add a instructions page to the beginning of the app. I would also like to make more of the buttons functionable and also make sure the domino flip is in every round like it should be. I would also like to make a couple of cosmetic changes to make it a bit more appealing to the eye. I learned that each part of the process is needed. Since we accidently skipped “crazy 8’s” and I tried to do it to understand what we missed I feel like we could have had a few more ideas added into the app if we had started from this bigger range of elements to choose from. If we had the chance to do this again, I would like to make sure we do every part of the framework as well as do a better job keeping track of all of our documents and pictures. Organization in a project like this is mandatory because all of us ended up searching around in the end to find all the elements we needed for our case study. If I had the chance, I think I would like to rework our app to include the feedback we have been given to make it more user friendly and just overall easier to understand. I also learned it is a good idea to have a plan for everything whether it is deciding certain days to meet to making sure we all meet deadlines ahead of time instead of the same day as the deadline is due. It was also super hard that we were a mixture of the two classes because some of our deadlines and assignments were weird and it seemed weird for some of us to work on assignments that we were not getting graded for. I also kind of wish our case study was a group assignment due to it being so long and it would have been better to have a mixture of our inputs since the project was a mixture of all of our ideas.
Project Retrospective
What did I find most challenging about this project?
Some of the smaller things we had to do I feel like could have been rushed due to one of the most important parts of the app is how people interact with it. I feel like if we had a longer time to user test many people’s apps would have been at more of a final point due to the feedback others were given. I feel like for my group it was hard for us to get this app to completely working point because of the little time we were given after the user testing. I also think we should have done our user testing as a group with all of us there while asking the questions and testing people so that if we could all see people’s reactions and hear the feedback directly so that everyone is more likely to change the app. Although many of the things we did in the beginning made it easier to decide what we put in the app I feel like it would have been more effective to stretch out the user testing more than the planning of the app since we are always able to change it.
What was the most valuable lesson I learned?
I think the valuable lesson I learned from the project was that we needed to get things done before their actual deadline. I feel like it would have made the project overall go a lot smoother and we could have done a bit of our own user testing before turning in checkpoints to the overall project. There were a couple times that we were rushing to get things done right at the time of a deadline and I feel like everything would be a lot more understandable if we had done it in advanced and together in person so things were all in the same format. I think especially with designing the different sides for the app would have gone a lot smoother if we had all done it together because it kind of turned into the whole thing being designed and then passed around and everyone gave their input and the person who created the app ended up having to change a whole bunch of stuff when it could have been done in the first place. We were also super bad at organization when getting things done at the last minute we had to search for different files and pictures to complete the goal.